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Updated: May 2, 2025
Two hours later, perched naked on the two packs and smoking, he heard a voice above that he could not fail to identify. "Oh, Smoke! Smoke!" "Hello, Joy Gastell!" he called back. "Where'd you drop from?" "Are you hurt?" "Not even any skin off!" "Father's paying the rope down now. Do you see it?" "Yes, and I've got it," he answered. "Now, wait a couple of minutes, please."
More blows were struck, curses rose from the panting chests of those who still had wind to spare, and Smoke, curiously visioning the face of Joy Gastell, hoped that the mallets would not be brought into play. Overthrown, trod upon, groping in the snow for his lost stakes, he at last crawled out of the crush and attacked the bank farther along.
The cold snap had broken. On top their blankets lay six inches of frost crystals. "Good morning! how's your feet?" was Smoke's greeting across the ashes of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the snow, was sitting up in her sleeping furs. Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke cooked breakfast. Daylight came on as they finished the meal.
Labiskwee was wonderful, and yet, beside her face in the flesh burned the vision of the face of Joy Gastell. Joy had control, restraint, all the feminine inhibitions of civilization, yet, by the trick of his fancy and the living preachment of the woman before him, Joy Gastell was stripped to a goodness at par with Labiskwee's.
And here, dazzling in evening gown, he met Joy Gastell, whom hitherto he had encountered only on trail, befurred and moccasined. At dinner he found himself beside her. "I feel like a fish out of water," he confessed. "All you folks are so real grand you know. Besides, I never dreamed such Oriental luxury existed in the Klondike. Look at Von Schroeder there.
"She's a sure goer," Shorty confided hoarsely. "I'll bet it's an Indian." "How do you do, Miss Gastell," Smoke addressed. "How do you do," she answered, with a turn of the head and a quick glance. "It's too dark to see. Who are you?" "Smoke," She laughed in the frost, and he was certain it was the prettiest laughter he had ever heard.
No further talk passed between Joy and Smoke for an hour or so, though he noticed that for a time she and her father talked in low tones. "I know 'em now," Shorty told Smoke. "He's old Louis Gastell, an' the real goods. That must be his kid. He come into this country so long ago they ain't nobody can recollect, an' he brought the girl with him, she only a baby.
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